Board Thread:Pokémon Help/@comment-31398341-20171026040947/@comment-27535813-20171216151308

Jovanmilic97 wrote: Allofyou, thanks for updating.

Was there a discussion with Nidoking/Darmatian Sheer Force niches? Not yet, I believe.

Nidoking will definitely see some use with Sheer Force, although all of its usable Sheer Force-boosted moves are Special moves.

Generally amazing STAB in Ground-type and Poison-type by having Earth Power and Sludge Bomb(Sludge Wave isn't available in PBB yet). It can run nice coverage moves such as Ice Beam/Blizzard, T-bolt/Thunder, Flamethrower/Fire Blast, Focus Blast and Shadow Ball. It can run physical moves like Rock Slide, Poison Jab and Superpower(Move Tutor) to help deal with special walls better, although this means that you'll be running mixed so natures might conflict, as well as EV placement. It can run a ton of utility moves such as Toxic, Taunt, Stealth Rock(Move Tutor) and Toxic Spikes(pre-evo), but this usually causes it to lose out coverage on a certain threat.

With regards to the meta, Ground-type is nice in being able to hit the plethora of Fire-type and Steel-type Pokemon. Toxapex could have been an annoying issue if Nidoking wasn't part Ground-type.

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Nidoking Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 64 SpD Toxapex: 265-312 (87.1 - 102.6%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Nidoking Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Toxapex: 211-250 (69.4 - 82.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Ground-type does leave it with a glaring weakness to Water-type, especially the likes of Greninja(Protean and Ash-Gren) and Gyarados, but none of them like to switch into its Poison-type stab and the possibility of T-bolt being one of it's coverage moves. There are also others like Mantine and Primarina, where the former is scared of T-bolt, and the latter is scared of Sludge Bomb.

Since Ground-type can hit most Steel-type Pokemon in general, Poison-type not being able to hit through Steel-types doesn't really matter, and instead helps with it's coverage in hitting most of the meta with neutral damage. More importantly, it kills Fairy-types which is a valuable asset in every team, especially how annoying Clefable can be.

The other types it is weak to such as Ice-type and Psychic-type doesn't really matter as it's not too prevalent, although it should still watch out an Ice Shard from a Mamoswine, Alakazam's and Mega-Slowbro's STAB move. Its Ground-type weakness may be a bit of a problem due to how Earthquake is just about everywhere in the meta with due respect to how spammable it is. Resistances-wise, the notable ones would be Fairy-type and Fighting-type, so it can at least take a resisted hit from most unboosted Pokemon such as Clefable, Mega-Blaziken and Mega-Lucario, however, this doesn't serve much purpose since it's not like as if it can outspeed these mons, which is quite the issue.